


Like You Do

by doctornemesis



Category: Naruto
Genre: Established Relationship, Feelings Realization, Headmaster Iruka, Hokage Hatake Kakashi, Love Confessions, M/M, Realization, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Slow Romance, Song Lyrics, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:27:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28910850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornemesis/pseuds/doctornemesis
Summary: Iruka is his salvation, he cleanses him from years of pain and agony. Dirt and blood.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Umino Iruka, Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 20
Kudos: 137





	Like You Do

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everyone! Long time reader, first time poster in the Naruto fandom. I have never connected music with any of my other writings before, but when I heard Joji's 'Like You Do,' it stood out to me, really stood out to me considering how long this thing is. I really hope you enjoy it, and any mistakes are all mine.

_When everything’s so pure, can it be aimless?_

_Painless?_

  
  
  


Kakashi stares at Iruka fondly as he stands inside his warm and cozy kitchen, the entire room smelling heavily of miso and eggplant because that’s who Iruka is, Kakashi thinks, so thoughtful. So kind.

There’s a slight breeze from the open windowsill, the curtains billowing at the mercy of the autumn weather, and Kakashi can't help but look down at his hands in that moment, checking them. They’re normal, if but pale and with abnormally slender fingers—deadly. He feels the blood that taints them, hints of iron filling his heightened senses out of nowhere, and he has the audacity to touch Iruka with such hands, grasp him in ways that leave Iruska cursing, his head thrown back in ecstasy, and he can’t stop.

He won’t.

Iruka is his salvation, he cleanses him from years of pain and agony. Dirt and blood. 

Iruka loves him as he is, and it’s a hard notion to swallow even on the best of days, especially now that he has plenty of time to stop and dwell on the matter. He’s the Hokage, for god's sake, the weight of the entire village rests on such narrow shoulders, and it will until Naruto is old enough and fully prepared to take the reigns. Hinata’s recently given birth to their first child, and Iruka takes him so readily into his arms. 

The spitting image of his father, Iruka coos every time he sees him. The man can’t help himself. Kakashi, on the other hand, is terrified of it—him. 

Boruto.

This precious gift, one of many due to the peace they’ve been able to achieve and maintain through hard work and dedication after such a devastating war, but one can never be too sure. Too careful, but Iruka’s cheerful disposition soothes the soldier in Kakashi; the General. Iruka is the love of his miserable, drawn-out life. 

He’s never been able to confess this out loud, but Iruka is keen, he can read the cues no one else can see. Kakashi might be able to hold the village together, but Iruka holds both him as well as the future of Konoha in his beautifully tanned hands, hands Kakashi has spent hours upon hours memorizing. The two of them are so different, that much is obvious—even to them—and yet, each of them are able to see past the absurdity of it. 

Kakashi felt himself swell with emotion that he’d tried his hardest in the past to kill the day Iruka was announced headmaster of the academy, considering how much of himself Iruka had devoted to the school and his students, it truly wasn’t surprising news. If Mizuki could see him now, he’d thought with a bitter sneer politely hidden underneath his mask, listening diligently over the intercom no one but he and Iruka knew about. He held no official stake in the matter, however. 

No control. No favoritism. It was a unanimous decision handed down to the man who most deserved it. 

  
  


_If you ever go_

_All the songs that we like_

_Will sound like bittersweet lullabies_

  
  


Iruka loves to sing when he’s in a playful mood, teasing and testing Kakashi’s limits. When it comes to Iruka, there are no limits, but the conversation about such a matter blossoms into the most beautiful of hydrangeas deep within his chest, spreading through his lungs before hindering the words in his throat, and he chokes. Iruka will sing and dance whilst cooking something quickly for them to eat together considering their busy schedules, he rarely allows Kakashi to intervene unless it’s an important task. Kakashi adores the tenor of the man’s voice, the highs and lows of it.

_All_ of it.

When they’re alone it’s often low and sultry. And when he takes him to bed it’s never hoarse, but raspy, stringing him up in the other’s lust. The ugly laugh he makes when he truly finds something funny is Kakashi’s personal favorite, though he’ll never admit to such a thing. 

Kakashi enjoys it more when he’s bent over the surface of that shoddily-built table, Iruka’s nails gouging deep puncture marks into the thin frame from the intensity of their sex that Kakashi commits to memory, even without his sharingan. He wants nothing more than to ask Iruka to leave; to run off with him and join him in the Hatake Compound where they can be together until the end of time. 

But Iruka has his pride.

Just like Naruto.

One orphan to another...

An inherited quirk from his adopted father and biological mother that he will never know, Kakashi thinks with a bittersweet smile that no one can see, flipping through the pages of _Icha Icha_ , knowing it’ll send Iruka into a fervor.

  
  


Kakashi wants to spit the reminder of Mizuki out from within his mouth like the bitter, rotten piece of fruit that he turned out to be, but the memory still haunts him as it does Iruka. He thinks about it every time he has Iruka flat on his stomach, the massive scar that mars his back on full display. The first couple of times they got serious, Iruka did his best to try and hide it, but Kakashi wanted it—claimed it as his own. 

Spent hours worshipping it.

Remaking it. 

  
  


Iruka lost everything when the Kyubi was unleashed. Everything. He lost his way for a while then...which no one could truly judge seeing as they all did the same...in one way or another. 

The carnage.

The heartbreak after lucidity kicked-in, the shock and adrenaline wearing off...leaving only pain and emptiness behind. 

The fact that Iruka was so headstrong that he’d taken off to find his parents in the midst of a raging battlefield...Kakashi can only imagine what that must have looked like. He tries to picture it some of the time when a certain look befalls Iruka’s face, normally when they’re closest to where Iruka’s family home used to be.

It is merely dust now. No grass grows there, and Kakashi finds that fitting. 

Iruka rose from the ashes; however, and with overt guidance from the Sandaime, he found his shinobi way. He earned the role of teacher. He earned the role of protector for the children in his care, even the boy who carried the demon fox that had ruined his life as he knew it. 

Iruka would die for them without a second thought, and the memory of Pain’s attack flashes through his mind like a dagger, causing an ounce of pain to arc through his left eye. 

Iruka saved enough money from rooming with Anko for a while as a young and fresh faced, and he used all that he saved to buy a little apartment of his own in one of the better chunin blocks.

But Iruka deserves more, and Kakashi can’t keep that thought from growing...he can’t contain it. It’s only a matter of time, he knows it. Iruka and Kakashi bicker quite frequently, it's a well known fact by this point, but their actual fights can be downright deadly and dangerous—all without ever laying a hand on each other. 

Iruka can live without Kakashi, but Kakashi cannot say the same.

The Hokage Tower is meant for the Hokage and their _spouse_.

When they share the same joke for the hundred and fifty-fifth time over a joyous meal that tastes even better because Iruka made it with love, content that they finally got a night to themselves for once—well, almost. Kakashi can’t help himself, removing his mask just to steal a quick kiss, one that normal people and shinobi alike couldn’t be able to make out. Iruka flushes, a grown man flushing!

Kakashi loves him so much and so dearly, especially when he reaches up to rub at the scar that raises above the bridge of his nose like the welcoming sunrise. 

Iruka continues to flush, waving helplessly at their guest who can hardly hold their little head up, seemingly concerned about the orange slices of fruit she’s never seen before in her short life. Babies were fragile, Kakashi realizes with some horror, but as always, Iruka is there. Kakashi tries his best this time. 

“Sarada’s right there!” Iruka harshly whispers, his shoulders tense and fingers clutching at the table in a way that hurts Kakashi down to his very core.

It’s all his fault. 

He kept Iruka hidden, like one would covet a prized possession. 

Iruka did not take it in such a manner. He took it to mean that their relationship was nonexistent outside of their short, sparse moments together, and Kakashi took advantage of that. With his unpredictable schedule and due diligence, it worked out for the better, but now...well now, it just hurt. 

He wants to confess. He wants Iruka to marry him. He wants to hold him whenever he damn well pleases. The old crowns known as his advisors are aware of Kakshi’s supposed “affair,” with Iruka, and the word alone made Kakashi’s face slip perfectly blank, exuding nothing but the utmost killing intent.

He was ready and willing to slaughter them both right then, right there, but Tsunade kept him in line, if but barely. 

He’ll show them, he swore it to himself. He’ll show them all.

  
  


“They’re apricots,” he says, a deep-seated pain rendering his heart into pieces. "They're beautiful and sweet, like my mother was.”

Hatake Anzu. Apricot. Sweet and warm. 

That’s all Kakashi could remember of her, that and her Inuzuka markings. He modeled his mask after the one she wore when she went out on missions, her nose even more sensitive than his own. It was years, long after both of them were dead, that he learned she was a skilled assassin, but Kakashi never knew that part of her.

He only ever called her mama. 

The first time Iruka trailed a tender but curious finger over the scar of Kakahsi’s injured eye one rainy night long ago when they were tangled together in his bed sheets (the first time he’d brought anyone over to his place); he knew he was the one, but he could never say it. Like now. When Kakashi would come to Iruka as Hound, they never spoke. All Kakahshi ever did was place his thumb along Iruka’s beautiful facial scar. A promise of his return; a goodbye if he couldn’t make it back home to him. 

Iruka shouldn’t have even known that he was Anbu, let alone _which_ Anbu he was, but Kakashi just couldn’t find it in himself to care. He could never stay away from Iruka for long, and Hound fixated on the teacher just as much, if not more, than his regular self did. Iruka offered him humanity, and Kakashi wanted to take it. 

But they’re not that young anymore. For fuck’s sake, Iruka’s a grandfather, and Kakashi is, too, by proxy. He doesn't mind Sarada; she is quiet and curious even though she’s barely ten months old. Or, so at least Sakura says, seeing as Sarada doesn't have an official birth record at Konoha Hospital, but that won’t ever hinder her. Kakashi will make sure of that. 

His students will always be his students, he muses. He’d learned that from his very own sensei. 

Iruka reaches over the table suddenly, and while Kakashi could stop him, and his instincts plead for him to do just that, he resists, and he's glad that he does because his reward is a kiss, and not a chaste one. Iruka pulls down his mask with no reservation or hesitation on his part, able to capture Kakashi’s bare, if but slightly chapped lips, for his own. The kiss is slow, an intensity burning behind it, promising more, and Kakashi is a hopeless fool when it comes to Iruka and his surprising ways of seduction. 

“What was that for?” he asks, leaving his mask down as he digs into his meal with a steady flow he’s learned to set when observing Iruka’s eating patterns. 

Eating for normal people meant a chance for socialization.

Kakashi is ashamed to admit that he’d never eaten a meal together regularly like this until he’d met Iruka, and no, he didn’t count Guy and his challenges as a dining companion. 

“I know how hard it is for you to talk about your mother,” Iruka says, as though it’s that simple, and, maybe for him, it is. Iruka is too good. He is too kind.

Kakahshi needs him to cleanse the foreign blood from his body. Blood from every country. A body count he stopped keeping track of.

He needed him to cleanse his soul.

For Iruka to love him as much as Kakashi does him.

Though unhealthy, his obsession burns deeply. He plays it cool, he plays it calm, and most certainly he plays it collected, but he’s hanging from a thread here, and no one but Iruka knows it. 

All he has to do is pull on it, and Kakashi will unravel. 

  
  


_Lost in the blue_

_They don’t love me like you do_

  
  


Shinobi serve to the best of their abilities. Together, they are honed into sharpened weapons meant for spilling blood and downing enemies in any matter deemed necessary. Kakashi has always been a better tool than he has ever been a person. It’s a sad truth, no doubt, but it’s the truth nonetheless. A different time, a different place, maybe things could have been different he amends whenever he visits those who have gone before him.

Iruka, too, is a shinobi, but he’s different. A different cog in the machine of Konoha, but just as vitality important. Dreaming, smiling, caring...who gave Umino Iruka the right to be so good natured when things were so uncertain on the best of days, and a complete and utter disaster on the worst of them with a clenched fist, but a reassuring face.

A walking, talking contradiction. 

_“Good luck, Kakashi-san.”_

That one sentence after so many years hit him like a baseball bat to the back of the head. The mission that nearly cost Iruka his young life at the hands of an even younger child. The kids eyes were already dead; his bloodlust was high. Kakashi didn’t hesitate to kill the boy quick and efficiently, discarding him like a piece of trash to get Irukas’s wounds tended to—seeing as they were fairly severe, but Iruka pulled away from him. Iruka shed tears over that unnamed boy, a missing nin from Suna who would have killed him without thought or hesitation. 

He wouldn’t allow Kakashi to touch him for the rest of the mission, though his ninken kept close tabs on Iruka’s overall wellbeing, reporting back to him while he pretended to be indifferent about the whole thing.

That’s the first inkling he ever had that maybe he could do better at being a person instead of a machine. 

There came a river that would undo most people for it’s notorious and dangerous currents, but injured or not, Iruka lived up to his name. He’d told him, “Good luck, Kakashi-san,” before diving in. Kakashi couldn’t find it in himself to move in that moment, intently focused on the troublesome chunin before his very eyes. 

Genma threw an arm over Kakahi’s shoulder, his presence familiar, battle ready just like him. “Good luck with that one, man,” was all he said before diving into the treacherous water headfirst like the fool that he is. 

  
  


_Since I met you_

_All the gloomy days just seem to shine a little more brightly_

_Consider what we’ve got, ‘cause I can never take you for granted_

_Is there another of us on this planet?_

_Planet?_

  
  


Sarada is asleep on his shoulder, drooling like babies sometimes do. He’s fortunate that he’s forgone his pompous robes, and he’s even more glad to feel human again. He dries the dishes Iruka hands him one-handedly.

He’s impressively good at it, but he isn’t necessarily boastful about his mounting talents at baby duty just yet.

“We should put her down to sleep,” Iruka says, his voice barely above a whisper against the shell of Kakashi’s ear, and how could he resist?

“Put her down... _where_ , exactly?” he asks, peering around the small space, more for show than anything else.

”I sort of made her a nursery in Naruto’s old room...,” Iruka says, ducking his head somewhat as if in embarrassment. 

“Iruka...”

“You know how busy Sakura is right now, and with Sasuke’s...situation. Well, you understand. I’m just trying to help when and where I can—”

Kakashi presses a lone finger to Iruka’s lips, efficiently silencing and angering him in equal measure. Gods, does he love to see him fired-up. 

  
  


_Those chills that I knew_

_They were nothing without you_

_And everyone else_

_They don’t matter now_

  
  


The two of them settle Sarada down, and Kakashi can’t help but notice how much she resembles her mother, even though her coloring is all her father. Her face is soft, cheeks chubby with warmth and food that they can provide. Iruka never takes any money to care for them, he loves them all already so much. He watches over them, carries their favorite treats and snacks in a “hidden” cubby that he isn’t aware that Kakashi knows about yet. 

She’s full and happy with a rounded belly, but best of all, she’s fast asleep. He’s particularly impressed that he convinced her to eat her first apricot, and that she loved it, mess and all. Together, they bathed her in Iruka’s sink that doesn’t drain right, and Kakshi towels her off even though his heart feels lodged in his throat until his other half came back, a godawful yellow onesie in hand that reads “miso cute” on it with a tiny bowl of ramen. Kakashi can only shake his head, stifling a chuckle, it was so very an Iruka thing to do that it pangs his soul in its own special way. It’s just him and Iruka, and the earth that feels like it should revolve around the man he so adores. The true sun. 

  
  


_I don’t wanna seem foolish_

_When I’m jumping into this_

_You’re all that I see_

  
  


Kakashi often dreams about their future together, when neither one is expected to be anywhere or doing anything until late in the afternoon, and they can take all the time in the world—no rush. The kisses will linger, the touches tender and all-knowing, Iruka will blissfully plead his needs, griping Kakashi’s silver mane tightly in between such fine fingers, and then he spills the words that Kakahi struggles so desperately to speak out loud. 

In his dreams, Iruka shares his bed together because by then it is _their_ bed. 

“Was dinner okay, Hokage-sama?” he asks in the midst of undressing, and it should be a sin to be so beautiful and bronze with the last stray streams of the daylight shimmering in through the blinds. 

His clothes don’t do him justice, but that’s fine so long as Kakashi knows a truth that no one else ever does. How Iruka meditates when he first wakes and just before he goes to bed, practicing his katas just as he instructs his students to do. A hypocrite, he is not. 

The stove was hot, the kitchen even hotter, and it has left a sheen of sweat along Iruka’s chest and neck that Kakashi wants to lap-up with his tongue. His middle is a little softer with age, his abs a little less defined, and no matter how active one is, it still happens. Kakashi, himself, has lost some of his muscle tone, his limbs are lanky and long now, and his hips jut out further than they ever did before. The curse of being trapped in a room full of never ending paperwork, he supposes, but he likes this.

No, he loves this. The word once again tearing at his throat like shards of glass. He loves Iruka so much that it’s pure agony.

“Iruka-sensei,” he warns, though he’s being just as playful, going along with it, but his voice deepens like it would when he gives out a command.

Iruka visibly shudders at the jonin’s usage of his name in that tone. Kakashi likes that, too. That he can still make Iruka shudder and blush and ache and lust after all these years.

After all his fuck-ups. 

Iruka is laughing as he removes the weathered hair tie that still manages to do its job, protecting such thick, soft tresses that Kakashi spends hours wrapping his fingers around for hours on end. The mischievousness has never once left amber-colored eyes, ever since he was a child. Kakashi can’t do anything, he’s spellbound and stuck in place. It almost causes him to panic; he's so happy, but then Iruka takes his hand, and everything feels right again in the world. He feels steady once again.

“Let’s shower and then soak for a while,” his lover chimes, all smiles, and only half of it is due to the sake they enjoyed after putting Sarada to bed, and Kakashi follows behind him blindly, “and then when we’re done, you can have me in every which way you want.”

Kakashi is momentarily dumbstruck by that, but only briefly; drawing Iruka to him for an embrace and harsh kiss he’d been holding back the entire night. A ravenous pressing of his lips on lips, and his eager tongue seeks out Iruka’s own. They intertwine together, gravitate toward one another, like fluttering moths to a flame, so entranced by its light that they can’t see the inherent danger, and Iruka’s proposed plan is set aside for the foreseeable future. 

Kakashi is touch starved, he knows this, and he used to be fine with it (he did have Icha Icha, after all), but one touch from Iruka, and nerves he never knew he had ignited across Kakashi’s flesh in the most unexpected of manners. He’d wanted more, and he’d gotten it. Iruka was so selfless, a saint who didn’t mind being covered in a shawl of blood and dirt.

Of letting a remorseless killer open him up with three drenched fingers. 

  
  


_I can’t help but think that our roads might take us down different phases_

_Don’t wanna complicate the rhythm that we got, but I’m speechless_

  
  


“Always use your words first _,_ ” he hears in Iruka’s stern teacher’s voice to a group of six year olds, but it could also apply to him, too. 

If only.

If only he weren’t such a coward about it.

He can’t keep a coherent thought together, not when Iruka’s back arches like a feline, and he spreads his thighs just that much wider, demanding more. There isn’t anything in this world that Kakashi wouldn’t do for Iruka, but the newly anointed headmaster either doesn’t know or, truer to his nature, he doesn't misuse it for insidious deeds. Kakashi uses his tongue to examine how ready Iruka truly is, and that earns him both a high-pitched keen as well as a bruised shoulder from an abrupt kick. 

Well done, he decides. He offers Iruka a genuine smile, and watches Iruka’s supposed humiliation dissolve into pure want. 

“Please, Kakashi, it’s been too long,” Iruka murmurs, one arm thrown across his eyes to hide his apparent eagerness and embarrassment, and Kakashi loves him all the more for it. For the past two and a half weeks, Kakashi has been on autopilot, completing one task after another with no mistakes, but his thoughts only ever reside with Iruka. Their lunch dates, late night dinners, and occasional run-ins throughout the Hokage Tower were not nearly enough. 

He wanted to touch Iruka. Strip him out of his pristine uniform, one piece at a time at a time—in front of everyone. He decrees that everyone should know explicitly instead of the tedious rumors that float around until they grow stale within the week. Maybe Iruka doesn’t want that, he wonders, mouthing at Iruka’s sack. 

A well known weak spot that brings a deep sense of shame and pleasure soaring through this truly magnificent creature before him. Sometimes he stares, lost in the other, even with Iruka’s cock halfway down his throat. It unnerves Iruka sometimes, or so he says. He complains—quite fairly, he might add—that he never knows what Kakashi’s ever thinking when he does so. Kakashi tried to explain once, but he became completely and utterly tongue-tied and unsure of himself, a humiliating experience in and of itself. 

If he were to express himself via Icha Icha he would never live to see another day. Iruka would kill him, and Kakashi would probably let him.

He pushes the unpleasant memory back into the recesses of his mind, dragging Iruka’s exposed backside down to the edge of a well worn futon that said futon owner refuses to let go of. He places a tender kiss to either side of Iruka’s ankles before hoisting Iruka’s legs up and over his shoulders. He licks his lips as the anticipation grows into a raging inferno deep inside him. 

“Kakashi, yes! Please!”

Finally, Kakashi complies with Iruka’s request, filling him nice and slow. A deceitful beginning, he admits; without having Iruka for this long, there’s no hope of taking it slow and gentle now that they’re here. It’s a good thing Iruka likes it that way, too.

Loves it, even. 

A naughty school teacher, he would tease after a nice morning cup of steaming hot tea. Iruka would grow flustered, going on and on about the other’s supposed teacher kink, but the conversation would go nowhere until one of them ended up down on their knees, sucking the other off. Iruka would have to order Kakashi out the door afterwards, shooing him away to dwell in a lonely office all day. 

“Fuck, your tight,” he groans because it’s true. No matter how many times they do this, Iruka’s always tight and hot around the head of his cock. “Look at how well you take me, sensei.” 

Iruka takes a deep, trembling breath, his hands on either side of Kakashi’s thighs, nails digging into pale flesh. “Have you ever considered that you’re just larger than average, Hokage-sama?” he asks, provoking Kakashi even more. 

“I’m not sure. I’ve never compared myself to anyone else be—” all coherent train of thought flees when Kakashi’s pelvis finally presses flush against Iruka’s perfect, plump ass.

He’s so deep inside him, he realizes belatedly.

In this way, they almost become one.

Iruka tosses his head back, his naturally wide and ever-observing eyes are clenched shut. He’s panting for breath already and they haven’t even started. Kakashi loves him, he murmurs it silently against such beautiful skin while Iruka’s busy relaxing around his girth.

Eventually, he does.

He always does, but Kakashi takes the opportunity to slowly rock into him. His cock is still lodged deep inside him, as deep as he can physically go. Gasping, Iruka’s eyes flutter open, and now his hips are grinding up slowly in tandem with Kakashi’s.

So, so slowly. 

“I’m ready,” Iruka declares in a low, sultry voice, half-delirious with lust and something Kakashi’s too afraid to acknowledge.

Kakashi takes his word for it. He almost always does. The equal want between them is palpable as it always is, but there’s something expanding deep inside his chest, and his ample chakra can do nothing about it. 

He fucks Iruka like he might break him, his pace rabbid and focused on this animalistic fucking he’s been daydreaming of for days. Iruka is the mission, and his pleasure is a scroll with top secrets that he must extract—at any cost. Iruka reaches for one of his many pillows, but Kakashi yanks his arm down and away, intent on hearing him scream, beg and sob.

“Kakashi! Sarada’s right—”

Kakashi shushes him, and Iruka fights the urge to hit him upside the head. But just barely. 

“Don’t worry, she can’t hear us.” 

Kakashi leaves it at that and, for once, Iruka doesn’t question him.

_They don’t love me like you do_

_Those chills that I knew_

_They were nothing without you_

_And everyone else_

_They don’t matter_

  
  


Kakashi knows this to be true. No one ever truly saw Kakashi the man, only ever the weapon prepared to die for a village that had shamed his father into taking his own life. Obito explained to him the day he died that what his father did was the right thing; heroic, even, and the floodgates of memories, precious memories, of his father crept in. Iruka would fail all missions if it meant leaving his comrades behind, and he instills this into the shinobi of the future. A future neither of them believed would ever come to pass, certainly not in their lifetime. 

Kakashi drops Iruka’s legs from the tops of his shoulders, an almost dark sense of foreboding taking over him, and he suddenly needs Iruka in the most primal of ways. He flips him over before Iruka can gather his bearings. He maneuvers him onto his hands and knees, gripping either side of Iruka’s cheeks, spit dripping along the now exposed hole. 

Iruka jolts forward at the action, but Kakashi’s grip is unforgiving—he knows he can’t go anywhere, and the thought alone draws out another moan, longer and deeper than the one before. Kakashi lines the head of his cock up with Iruka’s waiting hole, and he steadily presses inside him. He does so because he knows it drives Iruka to near madness. 

“ _Bastard_.”

Ah, there he is, Kakashi thinks.

The man he so adores...

...loves.

He sets a brutal, unforgiving pace. The kind Iruka demands. He has Kakashi wrapped around his little finger, but he doesn’t know it.

That, or he’s playing coy. 

Afraid that Kakashi might skitter off if he knew. And he very well might, but only to watch Iruka from his favorite hiding spots. To convey in his own way that nothing matters more to him than the teacher he fell in love with all those years ago.

Surely, the village should come first, but without Iruka, the pillar of the community...what village would be left to salvage. If Iruka were to die so, too, would Kakashi. 

Iruka’s smiles alone breathe life into him. His passionate, sometimes childish arguments build up Kakashi’s strength. His gentle hands helping to carry books, scrolls, or late night takeout build up his endurance to face yet another daunting day. 

Without Iruka, there is no Kakashi. Merely a shell; a husk of a man who was “great” at one time. He’d die without Iruka.

Life would hold no color.

So, he fucks Iruka like his life depends on it because, being shinobi it very well might, and their skin is layered in a thin sheen of sweat, his grip on Iruka’s hips slipping, that glorious ass of his meets him with every thrust, moaning his name all the while. He digs his short nails along the scar on Iruka’s back, knowing how sensitive the uneven stretch of skin is. Iruka cries out harder, his hands slipping as his upper body begins to give out. Kakashi keeps him upright, letting Iruka’s ass rest fully nestled against the front of the jounin’s pelvis, his cock sheathed inside him like the sharpest of blades, but it's the scabbard that is truly important. Truly.

It protects the blade when the blade is done protecting everyone and everything else. 

They’re older now, there’s less need for that, but war changes a person, no matter how close or removed they are from it. He’s in Konoha, he’s the Rokudaime now, for heaven’s sake, but he doesn’t feel truly at home unless he’s with him—Iruka. Iruka is truly too kind to a person like him. 

To offer so much when he, himself, has so little to offer. 

Kakashi doesn’t realize then that there are tears flowing from his eyes, not until drops of them fall along Iruka’s tantalizing skin, trailing down a slightly crooked spine. You would need a good eye to tell Iruka has scoliosis, but most people weren’t gifted with such a thing, even more than that, though, no one’s seen Iruka up close like this ever before. His eyes are transfixed by this, by his own pain. Iruka must sense that something’s wrong because he’s as still as the Hokage Rock when it’s not being desecrated by two miscreants...one of which he somehow fell in love with.

Iruka leans forward and down, effectively freeing himself from Kakashi’s caged motions. Surprisingly, they’re still hard, but the situation is odd and adrenaline inducing in and of itself. He looks at Kakashi with a mixture of both worry and love, and how does he do that? How can he be more like him?

  
  


_You’re the one I can’t lose_

_No one loves me like you do_

_No one loves me like you do_

Iruka places a tender and warm palm against a pale and sharply-angled cheek, and to his credit, Kakashi doesn’t flinch away. He knows Iruka’s scent, his face, the way he moves. He can predict a lot about a man who only ever uses his strengths to help those in need. 

To do good. 

“What’s wrong, Kakashi?” he asks into the silence of the night, and there’s an undertone of worry in the pinching of his brow. 

Iruka’s afraid that Kakashi doesn’t love him anymore, if he ever did to begin with, but it’s the absolute opposite, and he can’t let Iruka go the rest of his life living in uncertainty all because of him and his goddamn _cowardice_. 

“I...,” he starts, and then stops, looking down at his upturned palms, realizing he’d submitted himself fully to Iruka. “I love you.”

The tears fall in earnest now, and it’s a bit of a shock that Iruka’s the one wiping them away. He kisses him gently, ever so gently—like a ghost of a kiss. Kakashi doesn’t think they’ve ever kissed so softly, so sweetly before. 

He’d like it again, please. 

Iruka complies. 

“I know you love me,” Iruka says, a sad little smile hinged on the corner of his lips. “I knew there was some love in there dying to get out.”

“And I love you like no one else ever could, Iruka. Do you understand? I _need_ you to understand. The wars, the invasion, the attacks on Naruto and you, I just never thought I’d come home. I didn’t want you to mourn another loss.”

Iruka’s eyes well up at that, but he sheds no tears. “I love you, Kakashi-san,” he says, ever polite, “and nothing, not even death, could hinder nor stop that. Or did you forget that you really did die on me?”

“I told you about my father, right? When I...died.”

“Yes, you said you felt better. At peace. No longer being haunted by the White Fangs shadow.” 

“For him, sure, but I was raging on the inside, Iruka. I never wanted to see you die, but dying first, knowing you were still out there...I never wanted to see you die, but leaving you...I missed you all the same.”

Iruka smiles then, a genuine one that steals Kakashi’s breath away, and eases his heartache. “Then we’ll have to do our best to keep healthy and stay strong so that we’ll live long lives and fall asleep one night and pass away holding each other,” he says, kissing the corner of Kakashi’s mouth as though it solves everything.

And maybe it does. 

The mood is different, heavier, but in a good way. Instead of two, they feel like one. Kakashi has never felt this way before. The candles have all but burned out, leaving them in complete and utter darkness save the pale light of a full autumn moon. He can only hear his heart racing against the steady beating of Iruka’s own. 

Iruka takes him by the hand, pulling him down until he practically lands on top of the brunette. Their lips find each other so easily like they always do, even when they’re drunk and sloppy. Iruka wraps his legs loosely around Kakashi’s waist, and suddenly, he gets the hint. 

Their sex is so slow and all consuming that Kakashi’s afraid to even call it that. This is lovemaking at its finest...what artists display on rich pieces of silk. The grip Iruka has on his shoulders is deep, blunt nails digging into his skin when Kakashi manages to hit his prostate for the third time in a row, even in this languid, side-like position. 

Iruka is vocal. 

He hates it, can’t stand it, it’s not the shinobi way, but Kakashi thrives off of it. 

His love, his prey, pleading out to him for more—for the utmost bliss. 

Surely, there could be nothing better than this...

His body feels cleansed. 

His heart feels light as a feather residing in the cavity of his chest. But best of all, when he goes to the bathroom to start the shower he sees no blood on him. Not on his body, or in his hair, and most certainly not on his hands. When Iruka stumbles in, his hips not quite as flexible as they once were, he feels complete and utter elation. There, standing before him in all his naked glory, is the love of his unfortunate, fortunate life. 

He feels complete and utter rapture. 

He hasn’t tainted Iruka with any of his many sins. Child soldier, or not. In fact, he’s the one who feels restored; absolved of all his sins, and he is so thankful that he drops to the bathroom floor with a loud thud, his body supine as he bows lowly at Iruka’s feet.

“Ka-Kakashi! What are you doing?” his confused lover asks, trying to help Kakashi up and off the hard floor. “You’re still the Hokage, you do realize that? You can’t just go bowing before anyone!”

Kakashi barely glances up, lashes weighed down by the last of his tears. “You’re not just anyone,” he says, his heart steady, lungs taking measured breaths. “The Hokage’s spouse deserves the same respect, no?”

Iruka frowns as he often does when he’s trying to process something he deems complicated and/or stupid, most of the time it’s both. “I suppose a Hokage could bow to someone of equal status like that, but I’ve never seen it!” he exclaims with an echoing hiss, urging Kakashi to please stand. To at least sit up, for fucks sake. 

“Iruka, I want to grow old with you...,” he says, staring at the bleach white tiles with chips and cracks in quite a few places. “I meant every word I said, and I won’t stand for our relationship being labeled an “affair” anymore.” 

“An affair!” Iruka sputters, horrified. “If Mitokado-san and Utatane-san think for one second that I won’t march up there and confront them for such an insult, they’re wrong!” 

Kakashi never told him for this exact reason. 

“Trust me when I say that it’s been handled,” and when he says “handled,” what he really means is that Tsunade threatened them on Kakashi and Iruka’s behalf, using the strength of a single pinky to get her point across.

Iruka appears to deflate somewhat at that, sighing as he joins Kakashi on the cold tiled floor, their knees bumping together. He strokes Kakashi’s hair in the same manner that his father used to. “Oh, Kakashi,” he says. “They truly ask too much of you.”

His anger has churned into that of empathy, but never pity. No, never pity. His sincerity is what drew Kakashi to him in the first place. 

An honest person in a world full of espionage. A sigh of relief.

“I just want an answer, Iruka,” he says instead, tired of running, of hesitating, and Iruka must have known he was serious by using his name instead of his usual moniker. “Do you want to grow old together...with me?”

Iruka looks away briefly, studying the water that streams down along the shower wall, waiting for it to heat up. “Can we even do that, Kakashi?” he asks, and the jonin can hear the sorrow in his voice. Like a bird locked in a cage, unable and unwilling to sing another song of joy—only ever that of sorrow.

“I’m the Hokage, I can do whatever the hell I want,” he says, brash and angry for the both of them. “I want to marry you, Iruka. I want us to be together, closer than what we’ve been able to as of late.”

Iruka huffs an incredible sigh at that iron resolve that he so adores to see. “Within reason, you mean,” he says, pulling Kakashi off the cold floor so that their eyes meet. “I would love nothing more than to grow old and withered together with you, Hatake Kakashi.”

A sharp pain shoots throughout his heart, and Hatake Kakashi has never before experienced such agony, except it’s not a bad kind of pain. In fact, it feels as though the weight from the past and his insecurities have suddenly vanished. Fled.

He feels full. Fulfilled. 

Iruka manages to get them both into the shower, his back pressed up against the wall, Kakashi clinging to his chest and shoulders, but then Iruka starts to laugh—really laugh. His entire face growing red, not from arousal or embarrassment, but the heat of the steam rising in large wafts. That dazzling scar, Kakashi’s northern star he uses to come home from missions, no matter how badly in shape. 

“What’s so funny?” he asks. 

Iruka wipes his eyes, and Kakashi realizes for the first time that he’s been hiding his tears under the running water. Kakashi doesn’t try to wipe them away, he instead brings Iruka in for a tender kiss. Their eyes meet through a blur of steam. 

Everything feels too hot and desperate all of the sudden. 

“Nothing,” he says without a laugh but a choke. “It’s just...you asked me if I wanted to “grow old together with you” without realizing that that’s what we’ve been doing this entire time...for all of these years.” 

“No, we haven’t,” Kakashi whispers, and he hates himself for it, hiding his face in the crook of Iruka’s neck in shame. “I’ve only ever given you scraps while you’ve handed full meals to me.”

He’s ashamed. He can’t bear to meet the other’s intense scrutiny, afraid of what he might find residing there. Iruka forces his chin up, and suddenly they’re almost the same height again, except Kakashi’s a tad bit taller when he isn’t slouching. Iruka’s face is stern, set in stone. 

A monument in and of itself, really.

He grabs ahold of Kakashi’s face on either side, leaning in for a tender kiss that that he helplessly chases, his liferaft in such turbulent waters, but Iruka is calm as he says, “We can do this, but I can't promise that it'll be easy, especially with me,” he says, his smile soft, lingering. “Good luck, Kakashi-san.”

_And everyone else_

_They don’t matter now_

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I don't know about you, but it's almost 2 o'clock in the morning here so I'm going to crash. I hope you all have a great day.


End file.
